#7: Walking Away
Cecil Day Lewis on letting go...
This poem is about being a parent, about the sacrifice made by a parent willingly to expose his child to opportunities for growth, perhaps at a new school, as here. Written by Cecil Day Lewis the poem is dedicated ‘To Sean’, his eldest son.
It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away
Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.
That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.
I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.
Full of arresting metaphor – ‘touch-lines new-ruled’, ‘a half-fledged thing set free/into a wilderness’, ‘eddying away/like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem’ - representing perhaps a new regime away from the comforts of home, the hesitant steps of a small animal released into a threatening world, eddying as if blown randomly at the behest of the breeze, one is left with an indelible impression of the emotional tussle within the parent, a tussle hardly done justice to by the phrase ‘the small, the scorching ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay’. Except that it can be extremely ferocious in the crucible of separation.
This father is not a ‘Send my son away to school, it will make a man of him’ type, I feel. He probably knew from his own experience the challenges the lad would face in the years to come. He understands that the hesitant steps (‘the gait of one/who finds no path where the path should be’) signify a sense of lostness, and a significant sadness at being abandoned by his loving parent. But the child does not seek to return to his parent, he continues wandering into outer space, almost ready to confront the new adventure. In the end the parent can only hope that the situation works out for the best for his child; there is no certainty that it will. The father admits as much when he realizes that it is only God who can know.
In the final stanza the parent admits that even after eighteen years this parting gnaws at him still. We all identify with this emotion. We all have a memory of parting from parents to open new chapters in our lives. Some of us will have the same type of memory of parting from our children.
Does ‘selfhood begin with a walking away’? Is ‘love proved in the letting go?’ Not to quibble with the symmetry of the ending to a fine poem, but I am uncertain when selfhood starts to develop. It may be long before a walking away occurs. Yet I completely agree with ‘love is proved in the letting go’. No matter how painful for both or either party, the strength bequeathed by parting can only be a function of the deepest love.